Note 40 — Chapter II · The History of Cotton and its Introduction into Europe.

In the Grotto of El Kab are paintings representing, amongst other scenes, a field of corn and a crop of flax. Four persons are employed in pulling up the flax by the roots; another binds it into sheaves; a sixth carries it to a distance; and a seventh separates the linseed from the stem by means of a four-toothed “ripple,” which he uses just in the same way as it is now used in Europe. See Hamilton’s ‘Ægyptiaca,’ Plate xxiii., and Yates’s ‘Textrinum Antiquorum,’ p. 255.